After more than 10 years of on-and-off debate in Washington, the most important piece of the puzzle is still rarely discussed and poorly understood. Immigration reform must include worker visas for less-skilled foreigners who want to come to work legally in the United States.

We need a system that makes it easy for entrepreneurs, scientists, farm workers, engineers, hotel workers, business travelers and all the workers our economy needs to easily come here and help our companies compete.

A comprehensive plan should create a path to earned citizenship, enforceable border security, a realistic guest worker plan, accountability for employers that hire illegal immigrants and passage of the DREAM Act.

The return to power of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, will not be accompanied by the corruption that used to plague the party, says Arturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

At a panel hosted Tuesday by Richardson and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center, Sarukhan wouldn’t say whether he’d stay in his post if President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto asked him. But he said the PRI and the Mexican population have shifted, and that the country’s maturing democracy would not allow anyone to “turn back the clock.”

The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands and the Wilson Center seized the opportunity provided by simultaneous election years in the United States and Mexico to convene a high-level retreat of preeminent political, business, academic, and media leaders from the two countries in March 2012. From this retreat emerged a fresh set of ideas to take the bilateral partnership to a new level that are put forth in the report, A Stronger Future: Policy Recommendations for U.S.-Mexico Relations. The report presents recommendations to enhance regional competitiveness; reform the U.S. immigration system; more effectively fight organized crime and strengthen public security; further educational exchanges; increase energy cooperation; and develop ports of entry that strengthen trade and border security.

Should states and local governments have the right to enforce their own immigration laws when their voters decide the federal laws and practices are insufficient? No

When the Arizona legislature decided to crack down on illegal immigration, it forced its state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration law—or at least Arizona’s version. But what if Arizona’s new law drives more illegal immigration to the three remaining border states? How would those states react?

Imagine that legislators in California pass a law that denies business licenses to companies suspected of hiring undocumented immigrants. What if Texas sets up its own immigration inspections on state highways? And what would happen if New Mexico passes a law that closes the international ports of entry along the New Mexico–Mexico border?

Sounds far-fetched, doesn’t it? But it’s easy to see how one state’s actions related to a federal issue—immigration—could turn into the equivalent of an arms race among neighboring states.

The fact is, immigration and control of our international borders are federal issues for a reason. It is in America’s national interest to have a uniform approach to an issue that affects foreign policy and national security.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has withdrawn his name from consideration as commerce secretary for President-elect Barack Obama, citing an ongoing investigation about business dealings in his state.

Richardson, 61, who competed unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination, was secretary of energy and U.N. ambassador during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and also the first high-profile Latino named to Obama’s Cabinet.